Decline in Cancer Deaths Challenged by Aging, Research Funding

By Nicole Ostrow -
Sep 17, 2013

Deaths from cancer have dropped by
more than a million in the past two decades, driven by science
that opened new ways to prevent, detect and treat the disease,
according to a report by researchers. An aging population could
change that trend.

Almost 14 million people alive in the U.S. today are cancer
survivors, according to the American Association for Cancer
Research’s Cancer Progress Report 2013. The AACR, the world’s
largest cancer research organization, also warns that continued
funding for research is crucial as worldwide rates of cancer are
expected to rise to 22.2 million patients in 2030 from 12.8
million in 2008, they said.

“There’s going to be an increasing number of cancers
because the population is aging,” said Giuseppe Giaccone, an
associate director for clinical research at Georgetown Lombardi
Comprehensive Cancer Center at Georgetown University Medical
Center in Washington, in a Sept. 16 telephone interview. “There
really should be continued support for research in cancer. This
is the only way you can get continued results in the future. To
do this kind of research is expensive but there’s no other
way.”

Cancer is the No. 2 killer in the U.S. behind
cardiovascular disease. This year, more than 580,000 people are
expected to die and another 1.6 million Americans will be
diagnosed with the disease, the authors said. The majority of
those diagnosed with the disease are ages 55 and older.

Cancer Investment

Investments in cancer research have resulted in cutting the
rate of many of the more than 200 types of cancers and better
quality of life and longer lives for people whose malignancies
can’t be prevented or cured, the authors wrote. For instance,
survival rates for breast cancer for women and acute
lymphocytic leukemia for children have increased to 90 percent
or more since the mid-1970s, they said.

The National Cancer Institute, part of the U.S. National
Institutes of Health, is one of many federal agencies that fund
cancer research along with state and local governments,
voluntary organizations, private institutes and corporations.

The agency’s fiscal-year 2013 budget was $4.8 billion, down
$293 million from fiscal-year 2012 mainly on U.S. spending cuts
called sequestration, according to its website. In fiscal year
2012, the latest year data is available, the cancer institute
spent about $5 billion on cancer research. Cancers of the
breast, colon, lung and prostate garnered the most funding, the
agency said.

Prevention Gains

Giaccone said over the past two to three decades the most
advances have been in prevention and early diagnosis of cancer,
particularly disease of the cervix, breast and colon. More
recently, research has shown that imaging scans of the lungs may
help detect lung cancer earlier, he said.

Better studies are needed to understand how to more
accurately use screening tools to target those most at-risk for
disease to help reduce overdiagnosis and overtreatment, the
report said.

Many cancers are preventable. More than half of all cancers
occur because of preventable causes including obesity, smoking,
poor diet, lack of exercise and exposure to ultraviolet
radiation from tanning beds or direct sunlight. More studies are
needed to better understand ways to help people change their
lifestyle, the report said.

“One person will die of cancer every minute of every day
this year. This is unacceptable,” said Charles Sawyers,
president of the Philadelphia-based AACR and chairman of the
Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, in a statement. “If we are
to accelerate the pace of progress toward our goal, we must
continue to pursue a comprehensive understanding of the biology
of cancer. This will only be possible if we make funding for
cancer research and biomedical science a national priority.”